To think messing up honeymoon was stupid and not cute or funny?

[LuluNamechangeForHelp]

I was born outside the EU. I have been on several visas and eventually became a permanent resident of the UK.

My fiance knew I had always wanted to visit Berlin. (Long story). He knew one of the hurdles was the time and faff of getting a Schengen visa. A day off work to go to the embassy, travel to the embassy for photos, fingerprints, get bank statements, letters from work etc. You have to show you have booked your return flight and accommodation and that you have enough money in your bank account (not credit card lol) to fund the trip. That's before even saving up for it etc.

Fiance and I are both from immigrant communities and know the difficulty involved in getting visas for travel but he is a British citizen as they changed the rules after he was born. At the time, if you were born here to parents legally present in the country you automatically became a British citizen.

Anyway for honeymoon we had agreed to stay home as we were saving money for a house.

The day after the wedding he said 'surprise! We are going to Berlin!'

No. Because I don't have a fucking visa for Germany.
No, it's ok. You're British now because we got married yesterday.

That's not how it works. You still need a visa. It's just a different type (spouse of EU national: Form XYZ 23)

So we lost the cost of the flights, hotel everything and were only able to afford a holiday several years later.

We called the embassy and tried for an emergency appointment, honeymoon etc. No luck. Even the flight and hotel bookings he had done were fixed and couldn't be changed and insurance would not cover for 'your own stupid for fault.' First day of married life = Begging call centre people to bend the rules just this once please and (naturally) getting no's.

I don't even know how he booked the plane tickets because you have to click 'what visa do you have' if the passport number is not a British passport.

I guess he had been reading too much daily mail. I'm still not a British citizen many years later.

At the time I was in tears. Then I just tried to have a stiff upper lip about it when it was clear all the money was lost. I was like 'never mind, you made a mistake.'

Over the years he has told the story like it's a cute funny story.

I think it either shows you are a complete moron and that you had not been listening me for years about difficulty travelling.

Or that it was a mistake at the time but to tell it as a funny story is hurtful.

I did go to Berlin in the end years later. But it left a bitter taste in my mouth because it was meant to have been my honeymoon.

Aibu to think it is not a funny story.

OP, very understandable.

Your husband sounds really dim. I mean, really dim!

I can imagine your disbelief at his stupidity the day after your wedding, and the futher upset at then realised you've actually married such an twit....even if it was meant well.

Now, if he had even a small bit of cop on, he would realise how stupid he was, bury this story quietly and NEVER mention it again.......and I would hope you would also move on an let it go....

But, hey ho, oh No, he doesn't do that, he likes to make a joke about it every so often.

Therefore, very effectively reminding you of the upset you felt, and alsothe memory of realising what an idiot you had married.

He sounds incredibly obtuse.

I can well imagine such a complete lack of " just getting it"......means the marriage isn't great.

You must feel very dismissed, and disrespected, every time he drags it up as an amusing story.....

@gingersausage is absolutely right. Those listening to this story are indeed thinking ....'what a complete twat🙄......God help OP, imagine realising your husband is that big of an idiot day 1 of your marriage....AND he keeps reminding her of it too😳🙄'.

Wishing you well

I can see how this would come about, he’s probably still embarrassed about it and deals with that by playing the fool. It was a really lovely idea but it just didn’t come off right, and that’s unfortunate... but it was years ago.
I think the real issue here is that you’re not happy with him generally. If you were, I think you’d be much more likely to laugh it off. You’re perhaps focussing on the small things that grate rather than the bigger picture.

I think it was a nice gesture that he tried to arrange the dream honeymoon for you, even if it backfired.

I don’t think telling it as a funny story is hurtful, just one of life’s events.

As it's so many years later after the event, i think if you were in a happy marriage it wouldn't grate on you to such a deep extent.

He didn't listen to you and was stupid, but he was trying to do something really lovely for you, and this is how I think you would see it if the marriage was a happy one.

Resentment grows and grows and takes over in an unhappy marriage.

If your honeymoon was in or after 2004 you cancelled it for no reason

Er, if you’re married to an EU citizen then you don’t need a visa to travel in the EU. You don’t need one if you’re unmarried but in a longterm relationship with an EU national.

Oh wow, thanks for telling me that. All those calls, all the attempts. Silly us!

No.

You acquire a RIGHT to travel. You still need a visa.

The border guard does not have discretion. His job is not to check your marriage certificate, decide that's you, decide that hey, Lulu will be the one person who does not need fingerprints on file.

The people who check your passport are asking 'do you have a visa? Yes or no?'

Some passports are 'weaker' than others and if you are from those countries you always need a physical visa otherwise in your passport.

To pp saying did he really book anything?

Yes, we had all the paperwork. Call centre people seemed to know who we were from the references.

The airline gets fined if a passenger gets turned away at the destination. To avoid grey areas, they ask 'if you are x. Do you have a visa?' he said he clicked yes because he thought being married was the same as having a visa.

On one occasion as a student I was detained for many hours coming back into England. The flight landed at night and they wanted to call in the morning to see if I was enrolled in the institution. So I was locked in a room till morning then told 'its ok, you can go.'

A common experience with immigration officials, as with many petty bureaucrats we've often encountered (think GP receptionist, sometimes nice sometimes not) is that one encounters someone who takes great joy in having power over someone else's life and if their whim makes your life more uncomfortable some (hopefully a minority) get off on it. Putting yourself at the mercy of their discretion is often a humiliating experience.

There are many things you have a RIGHT to, e.g. free school meals. The children entitled to them still need to apply. Not just tell the dinner lady 'my mum lost her job, I'll have that free today.' even if they are entitled.

You don’t need a visa to travel to the EU if you have a spouse who is an EU citizen. It doesn’t matter which non-EU country you are from.

It isn’t me making those rules, it’s the EU.

If you came under any of the criteria below you could get a residency card and travel anywhere in the EU without a visa.

www.gov.uk/apply-for-a-uk-residence-card/eligibility

Unless they'd had a conversation about needing visas when they were married he hasn't ignored her knowledge and experience - he thought it changed once she was married to him. Stupid, yes, but ignoring her, no.

But she says in the OP that he knew?

@LuluNamechangeForHelp, am I understanding right that he knew all about the visa issues, and he just assumed that when you were married they would be waved away?

This is more an issue of your unhappy marriage, which you need to address. Maybe it's time to call an end to a marriage that's making you unhappy?

If you had been happy in this marriage I know you would be laughing together at the idiocy of the Berlin honeymoon, but because it's unhappy it's just a bad memory.

My second husband can be a bit silly at times, but we both laugh at the things he's done. I'm sure I would resent them if we were unhappy. We also laugh at the silly things I've done

If you came under any of the criteria below you could get a residency card. One of the cards = spouse of an EU national.

That is a visa.

To get that card is a lengthy and expensive process in terms of documentation etc. The quickest I've heard of someone getting that kind of card is six months after application.

I understanding right that he knew all about the visa issues, and he just assumed that when you were married they would be waved away?

Exactly.

@SimonJT Have you considered that the rules changed between then and now? Just like rules to become permanent citizen changed over the years multiple times.

I similarly had friends who were sposed of EU citizens and required visas to travel to EU countries (one got married 4 years ago and missed their honeymoon in Italy and stayed in the UK because his wife from outside EU did not get the required paperwork on time).

It isn’t lengthy, or expensive (it’s about £60) and you don’t need a great deal of documentation.

I needed my passport, a photo for the card, my partners passport, a passport photo of him, and proof we had been together two years, for us this was two years of council tax bills and a bank statement from our joint account.

It isn’t a visa as a visa is for a single specified state and requires proof of earnings, length of trip etc. With the card you just show it along with your passport at passport control on as many trips as you like, at renewal you just supply a new photo and confirm your right to the card remains the same, but after five years you can of course instead apply for permanent residency.

The application approval takes around six weeks, you then get a letter saying you have been approved and your card arrives a few days later.

It requires a similar amount of documentation and cost of a basic civil wedding in the UK.

@MonaLisaDoesntSmile Those particular rules have been in place since 2004, that’s why I included the date in my post.

I think it either shows you are a complete moron and that you had not been listening me for years about difficulty travelling.
Hm, he's telling it as a funny story, and you're telling it as a story about how you only noticed he was annoying after you got married.

@SimonJT The application approval takes around six weeks

So that still wouldn't have worked. That's my POINT. You need documentation. You can't just turn up at the airport without that.

I suspect you are cooped up during covie 19 and all this stuff from the past is just coming out. Try not to think about it - it is over and done and we all make mistakes.

But you were able to apply for one and you would have gotten one, so there was no reason to repeatedly tell your partner that you couldn’t holiday in the EU without a visa.

You got married right so found out how to do that and the process required, you could have applied the same process to holidaying.

I fancied a holiday to Spain, found out how to do it, figured it might be awkward, I then found out it was quick and easy, as soon as I could prove we had been dating for two years I applied and off on holiday I went. My application was a little longer to process as well as I had previously changed my name

This still rankles with you because presumably he's a bit of a git in other ways too. When the dust settles after this current shite you can plan to leave?

Broadly, I'd say anything that didn't involve harm to a person is comedy fodder once enough time has passed. My DP booked us a surprise trip to Miami in bloody hurricane season, he said there 'wouldn't be any hurricanes'. There was an almighty tropical storm but tbh it was even quite funny at the time. This isn't funny to you because your current situation isn't one of light heartedness.

Do you have a good friend who you can talk to about this stuff?

You holding on to this and hating him for it is not going to help your marriage. Everything he does now will always drag up what he did before and you’ll be that much more annoyed with him as he’s a ‘moron’. Let it go.

If you were happy with him, you would probably also see it as a funny or rendering reminder of how stupid he was. However, as you are unhappy, you are thinking it proves he was always a tosser.

How many years ago was this OP?

@SimonJT - your points are unhelpful to a situation long gone.
The OP didn't know that her husband had set up this situation without telling her, or, you know, she might have had time and the chance to actually apply.

He didn't think she needed to, so he didn't tell her, so it couldn't happen. What part of that isn't filtering into your brain?

But you were able to apply for one and you would have gotten one, so there was no reason to repeatedly tell your partner that you couldn’t holiday in the EU without a visa. This had been the conversation in the years before we were married. We knew each other before.

It's not a case of having said that 'boo hoo when we get married there is no way to travel'. We had decided to stay at home. He booked everything alone. If he had told me this I would have had the six weeks to get that paperwork

In fact I happen to know quite a lot about this through my former job. One difficulty is you need to choose a 'visa track'. If you change your status to 'spouse of an EU' national it affects a number of things including whether or not you are allowed to work.

When I booked my normal Schengen I had to wait 3 weeks for an appointment. None of these things are instantaneous. I know my parents just to get physical stamps in their passports authorized at the border but now you will need to have retinal scans and fingerprints taken before you can start anything and that is a process that always takes weeks at the minimum, not on the day of a surprise.

I get it op. My now exh's marriage 'proposal' was awful and although we did get married it always left a sour taste as I always wondered about the authenticity of his proposal. We did last 12 years but it wasn't a happy marriage really and those early experiences really tainted it for me. So I understand your feelings. If things aren't right generally then you're both probably better off without.

I get it OP.
You had agreed not to have a honeymoon because you were saving for a house, and you ended up a) without a honeymoon, AND b) loss of savings.
That would really rankle with me because I have been in a situation where a poor decision led to me being broke for years.
If your marriage was happy you would no doubt have worked through this by now, but as you say, it's not, so little things, resentments etc will continue to fester until you do something about it.
I have no advice, just